Heard the one about the comedian lawyer?

Christian Spicer is a lawyer by day and a standup comedian at night. He performs next month at the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival. He gathers his material from a variety of sources.
— Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune

Christian Spicer is a lawyer by day and a standup comedian at night. He performs next month at the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival. He gathers his material from a variety of sources.
— Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune

His wide eyes and constantly moving hands tell you that more than politics are sparking the wit of Christian Spicer.

“Obama, Obama,” he says. “I love Obama — I still ride the Obama train once a day in my living room.

“I drove by the Sears Essentials store the other day,” he continues. “But judging by the number of cars in the parking lot, I would say nothing is essential at Sears … there was no one there.

“I saw this sticker on a lady’s bumper that read: ‘Focus on Jesus,’ and two minutes later, she ran into the car in front of her. She should have kept at least one eye on the road.”

Christian Spicer, a 29-year-old Houston transplant, is an up-and-coming standup comic who plays nightly at venues around the county, including the Comedy Palace in Clairemont, the Comedy Store in La Jolla and the Kensington Club in Kensington.

He has been invited to perform in February at the 10th anniversary celebration of the South’s largest comedy festival, the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival. And in March, he will launch a northeast college campus tour, taking him through Maine and New Hampshire.

Making folks laugh is Christian’s passion, but he’s more than just a guy who writes his own jokes and wisecracks in clubs.

On Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, he practices commercial litigation under his given name, Erik Mazza, ﻿at the law firm of Butz Dunn DeSantis. The money he makes there helps him and his wife of seven years, Amanda, ﻿a resident in internal medicine, pay the note on their North Park home.

Christian is good at law, which he has been practicing for four years. He likes the challenge. It’s why he went to Southern Methodist University, Rice University and the University of Houston College of Law.

A runner who was ranked among the top 20 in the nation when he competed in the 800 and 400 meters as an undergraduate, Christian, the second of three sons, admits: “I’m pretty competitive and I like winning. It’s very rewarding putting together a winning law case.”

But he chose to get into commercial litigation because he saw criminal law as “too personal.”

“You know, with commercial law, it’s usually about a couple of companies fighting each other over some money, and I figure people can get over losing some money. But criminal cases, they usually involve” some kind of physical or emotional harm caused by or against someone. “I don’t like getting involved in any of that.”

Christian also doesn’t like some of the drawn-out mundane procedures that attorneys must wade through in presenting a case in court.

Still, he says, he strives to strike a balance between practicing law and doing standup.

His wife is supportive, he says. So are other attorneys.

Christian got involved in standup comedy in 2005, when he was in law school.

Even in his younger days, Christian was the kind of kid who could, he says, “be kind of a jerk — you know, the kid who would do (all the things that would annoy) my parents. Like on a long car trip, keep (flicking on and off the new light in the back seat) or keep kicking my feet up under my mother’s seat (on the rider’s side).”